Bill Whittington

Dan, I'm looking at this weekend, and I was trying to look at it through the Bears' lens, and I don't know that we discovered anything major that we didn't already know in terms of the NFC West being the best division in football, and the results certainly could have gone either way.

Home field advantage, of course, advantage Seattle.

Do you feel like there's anything you learned about the Bears' plight through watching football this weekend?

I don't know if you guys felt similarly, but it just felt like, you know, you were watching a party that you were a part of, right?

Like, you know, in previous years, the playoffs have seemed so foreign.

They seem so far away to people that have watched the Bears all year.

And it's like, yeah.

That's a different realm that those teams are living in.

And this year, you're just like, no, that's the realm the Bears were in.

It's the realm the Bears could have stayed in if they had made one or two more plays against the Rams the previous weekend.

And so I think it just does give you...

a little bit of that hope that your window of contention is open.

And then, as I always say, what you're trying to do when those windows open is find the strongest steel rod you can to put in there to keep it open for as long as possible.

And so we'll see what they do this offseason to kind of keep that window open because it's clearly there, and it didn't feel like any of those teams playing yesterday were worlds away like they usually are when we're watching the playoffs.

Yeah, and you've got to make some difficult decisions with your salary cap and veterans that have high salaries, and you've got to start to put that puzzle together and figure out your path to sustaining success.

I was absolutely enamored by the way Ben Johnson set the tone last week in the end-of-season commentary.

press conference and just being very firm and stating that, you know, this is going to take us right back to the bottom of the mountain.

And this climb is going to be just as grueling as it was in 2026 as it was in 2025.

So there's no time to sort of exhale and pat yourself on the back and feel satisfied about what you achieved because the NFL doesn't wait around for you, you know?

And so if you fall behind with the work you're putting in and the way you're building your roster and the